Ever since Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg opened the Post-Conviction Justice Unit, case after case has been turned over after a reinvestigation. The most recent one stems from the brutal murder of a French tourist.
Among the crowds of people visiting New York to watch the ball drop in 1987 was Jean and Renée Casse, The New York Times reports. While walking on 52nd street, the 71-year-old man was assaulted and robbed. He died the following day from a critical head and neck injury. Four witnesses identified 19-year-old Eric Smoke and 16-year-old David Warren as the suspects in a lineup. Prosecutors then filed documents alleging the two knew each other and loitered in Midtown during New Year’s Eve. That along with a few teenagers who were pressured into identifying them as the culprits, per ABC7's report.
However, the two spent the past four decades restlessly trying to clear their name. They were paroled in 2007 and 2011 but it wasn’t until 2022 when the PCJU picked up the case and uncovered the flaws.
Read more from The New York Times:
One witness initially testified during the trial that he had “seen the old man fall down, hit his head on the concrete wall,” and later that he had “seen the next guy going through the pockets.” However, during the re-investigation, he told prosecutors that he was made to feel like a suspect and that he had fingered Mr. Smokes and Mr. Warren partly to “avoid getting arrested himself.”
The now-suspect witness testimony was vital in the jury room, according to one member. The juror, Luana Dunn, said in a July affidavit that the first vote at the start of deliberations had been 7 to 5 in favor of acquittal. But, after rereading the testimony, “votes started to flip to guilty,” she said. After hours, the vote was 11 to 1 for a guilty verdict, except for one “Spanish lady who would not change her vote,” Ms. Dunn said.
SMH, shoddy police work at it again. Smokes told reporters outside the courthouse he was less angry but more disappointed in the way the case was handled by police. Smokes was reunited with his 38-year-old son who was a baby when he went to prison. Warren told reporters he would have been reunited with his wife but she passed while he was incarcerated.
The two both refused to sign a plea and risk the other taking the fall for the crime.
“Thirty-something years later, you are still fighting for your right, for a court to say to you that those convictions were not warranted, and so today to you I am going to grant that,” said Judge Stephen Antignani in court last Thursday. He said they could walk out knowing they weren’t criminals.
Mr. Warren responded, “We never were.”
The report says the two are considering returning to court for compensation.